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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27298093">Tremble</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack'>lonerofthepack</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Taken 'verse [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Amputation, Broken Bones, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dehumanization, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Injury, M/M, Medical Trauma, Panic Attacks, Torture, Whumptober 2020, count the panic attack symptoms: all of them, explicit descriptions of torture, imagined injury, mention of WWI service, remembered wartime injuries, shell shock/PTSD</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:54:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>864</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27298093</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the 2020 Whumptober prompt: Panic! At the Disco: Panic Attacks | Phobias | Paranoia</p>
<p>Gasping was a terrible idea, made him remember that broken ribs were sharp as knives and he risked breathing blood. His head spun, trying to get himself under control. <br/>He was shaking. It was cold--he was always so cold. It didn’t matter how soft the mattress was, or the rust-stained sheets, the castle was always freezing cold.<br/>His heart was fluttering, a trapped bird beating itself against sore ribs. Fast— faster when he tried to breathe and couldn’t for a moment, not without stabbing himself, the shivers wracking him. <br/>This wasn’t unusual. It was…</p>
<p>Set as an interlude in the Spared chapter of the Taken 'verse</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Taken 'verse [9]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951963</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Tremble</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Panic! At the Disco: Panic Attacks | Phobias | Paranoia</p>
<p>...You didn't think it was going to be all soft ansty whump forever, did you? This is strictly Dead Dove, possibly the worst thing I've ever written, and your mileage may vary. Please see the note below for a full list of stuff.</p>
<p>Panic attacks fucking suck, -10/10 do not recommend.</p>
<p>None of these necessarily properly denote a true phobia or paranoia, since those are specific and typically sustained, rather than circumstantial and compounded by panic; that said, there's definitely a lingering terror of amputation as a medical response to frostbite, and a fear of being blinded that definitely borders on phobic. The paranoia is certainly earned.</p>
<p>Mentioned in no particular order: trouble breathing (broken ribs compounded by panic), broken and lacerated hand, other hand going numb from panic attack but associated with frostbite, cold, rapid/thready pulse, trouble remembering events, collapsing building, stitches as a medical intervention, medical intervention as torture, discussion of nausea, vomit, and abuse for vomiting including dehumanization and torture, blindness, passing out, hiding and being abused for hiding, blindness as a disadvantage to a prisoner including complications with food and possible endangerment, and embracing death bordering on suicidal ideation.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p>Breathing...hurt. Sharp on every lift, aching as his lungs emptied, no matter how shallow he held his gasps.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>His hands...one throbbed, and that was almost a relief, because he could feel it, every fever-pulse of it. The other, his wand hand, tingled at the fingertips, feeling frost-nipped and terrifyingly lost to him. It was too dark to see, if it had gone that awful white that proceeded bruise-blacking rot and—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Gasping was a terrible idea, made him remember that broken ribs were sharp as knives and he risked breathing blood. His head spun, trying to get himself under control. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>He was shaking. It was cold--he was always so cold. It didn’t matter how soft the mattress was, or the rust-stained sheets, the castle was always freezing cold.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>His heart was fluttering, a trapped bird beating itself against sore ribs. Fast— faster when he tried to breathe and couldn’t for a moment, not without stabbing himself, the shivers wracking him. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>This wasn’t unusual. It was…</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Had he dreamed the castle coming down on his head? Couldn’t be, his back ached with bruises from the shingles.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Unless he’d imagined it, transmogrified a beating into a fever dream of false hope.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Did they break the wrong hand, then? It ached, the familiar throb of broken bones, the less familiar throb of — stitches, maybe? Had they resorted to No-maj medicine as a form of torment, sewing wounds that could be erased with one evil wave of Grindelwald’s fucking wand?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He—</p>
<p> </p>
<p>What he wasn’t going to do was throw up. He’d choke on it first, rather than lay in it, or be kicked down to the floor to suffer having his face rubbed in it, like a puppy owned by terrible people. It didn’t matter how his stomach rolled, how painful gulping air and swallowing down the burning rush of bile, how foul his mouth felt — </p>
<p>He’d die first, and the way his heart felt, battering against muscle and bone, like it would tear away from its own sinews with the violence of escape, he might very well get that wish.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He wished he could see his hands, understand why he couldn’t make his fingers move, what held them trapped.</p>
<p>He was grateful, not to. He knew what it looked like, when a hand went dead white, and he knew what it smelled like, when it went mottled black and had to be cut away. Healing no-maj had been decreed against the Statue, even in wartime, but sweet Circe’s tits, what they did to each other in the name of healing.</p>
<p>His eyes ached, trying to see anyway. The glowing line of light under the door was in such a strange place, and it moved, floating up toward the ceiling as his head swam and spun.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sitting was.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’d have fallen, he thought, if he was standing. But he was sitting, so there wasn’t anyplace to fall.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The only benefit of a bed, really— nowhere to fall. He’d have crawled under it, if he’d fallen to the flagstones — it made Grindelwald laugh and hurt him while laughing, it wasn’t really a safe place, but there was something comforting, that half-second of concealment before he bashed his head against the bedframe in the throes of cruciatus, before he was dragged out and shown the error of his ways. Grindelwald liked the illusion of a needy lover— if he wanted to hide under beds like a dog, he’d been treated like one. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Flat would have been better, maybe his head would stop pounding and he could see past the big dark spots blackening his vision. The beating must have been bad this time, since it lingered; or maybe they’d clipped his head, blinded him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Would Grindelwald keep a blinded prisoner.</p>
<p>More trouble — harder to intimidate, if he couldn’t see to properly fear. Probably couldn’t keep up with feeding him the same way, leaving a bowl of porridge at the door — probably couldn’t leave him to do most things the same way, not if they wanted him to survive the stairs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Harder to pretend, if he couldn’t judge Grindelwald’s moods — harder to know when to beg properly or when to offer barbed compliments, or when to be silent, defiant or placating or...</p>
<p>Maybe his hearing would sharpen? There was a shrill keening, high and thin and soft— one of the other prisoners? Would Grindelwald have moved one of the others to the tower he’d been stashed in? Would he hear it, now, blinded--would Grindelwald move that quickly, to find some new way to drive him half-mad with panic?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The sound cut out, as he gagged on the taste of blood and bile, swallowed frantically on a throat lined in glass— Grindelwald didn’t have any patience for vomit or anything that wasn’t plain blood, and wouldn’t bother with him, which meant the others, and they were worse, always worse— </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Curling up was an instant mistake.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Not one he regretted long, though — a moment of fiendfyre-searing, or maybe cruciatus, if Grindelwald had cast it and then—</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>what could only be</p>
<p> </p>
<p>death</p>
<p> </p>
<p>up over his aching head like a lethifold all beautiful muffled cloying blackness</p>
<p> </p>
<p>patting down the pain to</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>emptiness</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading. Sorry for stuff.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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